Harry Martinson: Dreaming about Portland, Oregon

Harry Martinson:
Dreaming about Portland, Oregon
LARS NORDSTROM
Harry Martinson's biographer, Sonja Erfurth, writes that when
Martin Olofsson, Harry Martinson's father, first saw Bengta
Svensdotter, the author's mother, he was so taken by her beauty
and charm that he abruptly abandoned his previous fiance and from
that moment would not leave Bengta alone.1 According to some of
their contemporaries, he was not her first choice for a husband, but
she had become pregnant and social conventions held out only one
option—so in September 1895 they were married. Considering these
circumstances, it is not surprising that Martin appears to have been a
jealous husband from the start. Furthermore, it also seems likely that
Olofsson, a world-traveler and adventurer, came to regret his deci­sion
to settle down in an area with strong traditions, fixed social
positions, and stubborn resistance to change. Over time he clearly
became an increasingly bitter man.
Using Martin's inheritance, the newlyweds set up a small country
store on the first floor of their house in the village of Nyteboda in
Blekinge. Over the years, seven children were born to the couple.
Harry was the fifth and the only boy. Due to his abrasive personality
and short temper, Martin Olofsson made more and more enemies as
the years went by. Eventually there was a lawsuit following one of his
many fights, and Olofsson had to pay a fine and spend three months
in jail. This was only the first in a growing number of fights, jail
sentences, and fines. In 1904, after mounting debts and repeated
lawsuits brought by unpaid creditors, the Olofsson store was declared
LARS NORDSTROM holds a P h . D . in A m e r i c a n literature from the University of
Uppsala. In the late 1980s he settled with his family on a small vineyard in O r e g on
and has since w o r k e d as a free-lance author and translator. His areas of interest include
twentieth-century American, Swedish, and Sami literature.
bankrupt and the family lost its home. A l l of this proved to be too
much for the marriage, and Martin and Bengta, or Betty, as she was
now called, separated (but did not divorce). In 1905 Martin Olofsson
received a boat ticket from a childhood friend in the United States.
He used this to reach America, and he eventually settled in Port­land,
Oregon. There he found work with the city streetcar company.
Removed from the conflicts at home, he was able to get back on his
feet. The fact that he regularly sent money home to the family and
stayed out of fights and brawls demonstrated two things: that he was
loyal to his family and this his problems in Sweden were at least
partially related to his discontent with the community in which he
had lived.
When Harry Martinson writes about his father's life in the United
States in his autobiographical novel Nässlorna b l o m m a , he correctly
places the father in Portland and provides details in a matter-of-fact
way. For example, he writes: "For two years he stood driving a trolley
in a city far away by the Pacific Ocean. It was difficult for him that far
away. . . . But the letters from Portland were not few and far between.
He had not forgotten her."2 During her husband's absence, Betty
Olofsson, with the additional financial support of friends and neigh­bors,
was able to open a new store under her own name. The chil­dren
were healthy and happy, and Erfurth writes that these were
"probably the best years in Betty Olofsson's life."3
In the spring of 1908, Martin returned to Sweden. He had con­tracted
tuberculosis and been told by a doctor that a change of
climate would be beneficial. Sharing the common belief of the time
that alcohol worked as a cure for the disease, Olofsson started drink­ing
on a regular basis again. He was bitter over his fate and increas­ingly
jealous of his wife, whom he suspected of having lovers. It did
not take long before he was back into his old pattern of responding
to the slightest teasing or provocation with his fists.
With her husband in jail after an unusually severe beating, Betty
decided to move the family to a small, nearby town and open a
larger store combined with a restaurant. On the surface, the woman
with seven children seemed to be doing quite well. The roomy house
was nicely furnished. The children were clean and dressed in fine
clothes. They even employed a maid. But in reality, the business was
254
failing. Creditors were not being paid with income from the store and
restaurant, but with money from new loans in an ever-accelerating
spiral of debts. In prison Martin's tuberculosis got worse, and when he
was released in the spring of 1910 he was transferred directly to a
hospital. A few weeks before his death in April 1910, he was sent
home.
In August 1910 Betty Olofsson's business finally collapsed and
was declared bankrupt. There was a debt of about 17,000 SEK, a
substantial amount of money at the time. To put this amount in
context, we can compare it to the salary of the richest man in the
area, a factory owner, who declared an annual income of about
10,000 SEK; or of the typical farmhand, who averaged about 100
SEK a year on top of his room and board. To make matters worse, it
was now discovered that the oldest daughter also had contracted
tuberculosis and had to be sent to a sanatorium.
It is hard to imagine a more desperate situation. The Swedish
economy was in a slump; Betty was burdened with unpayable debts;
she had seven children to take care of, one of whom now had
tuberculosis; and there was a well-guarded secret as well—she was
pregnant, and her late husband was not the father. Unfortunately, the
real father had no intention of marrying her, and with the social
conventions in place in Sweden at the time, an illegitimate child on
top of everything else would put Betty at the very bottom of society.
Towards the end of November 1920, she abruptly left, leaving her
children behind to be looked after by her half-sister, Hilda.
In his novel Nässlorna b l o m m a , Harry Martinson describes his
mother's sudden departure as "mother Betty's inexplicable flight."4
Throughout the novel, the author's alter ego, the young boy Martin,
keeps repeating the line "My father is dead and my mother is in
California," and emphasizing that loss is one of the central themes of
the book.
Exactly what happened to Betty Olofsson after her sudden depar­ture
is not fully known, but she seems to have stayed in Göteborg
under an assumed name until the end of January 1911, when she
gave birth to a son who was given up for adoption.5 In the spring of
the same year she was in Portland, Oregon, where she found work as
a maid. She wrote back saying that there were many Swedes in the
255
area and plenty of work, and that she made $40 a month. As soon as
she could save up enough money for tickets, she would send for her
children.6 In Sweden, her half-sister lacked the financial means to
keep six extra children at her house, and, receiving little, if any, help
from Betty in Oregon, she was forced to hand over the children to
the local authorities. They, in their turn, scattered the children in
various foster homes in the parish. Meanwhile, tragedy struck the
family again: in May 1911 the oldest girl, Edith, died of tuberculosis.
Like his four sisters, young Harry Olofsson spent the years be­tween
1912 and 1917 as a foster child on various farms, and it was
during these years that he changed his name to Harry Martinson.
Some farms were good places with friendly people, clean accommo­dations,
and sufficient food and clothing. Others were quite the op­posite:
abominable places with beatings, lack of food, scant clothing,
and appalling conditions. Harry ran away more than once. In Nässlorna
b l o m m a , whenever the boy runs away from a foster home, it is to find
Betty in "California." This novel was originally published in 1935,
and it is interesting to note that, whereas all the references to his
father's sojourn in Portland are factual, the location of his mother,
who was still alive in 1935, is always altered to California. California
becomes, in other words, Harry Martinson's code word for Portland.
In 1912 Betty Olofsson was able to send her daughter Clara a
ticket to Portland, and a year later Blenda received a ticket. Natu­rally,
the remaining four children kept waiting for their mother to
send them tickets to Portland as well. In Harry Martinson's fiction,
the boy's early years are characterized by longing for his mother while
waiting for that ticket to America. Still, he is aware that something is
not right. In a passage in which his older sister comes to visit before
she is off to America, we catch a glimpse of this:
Now she was, she said, finally confirmed and on her way to
California. Mother had sent her a ticket.
—She will help us all to come over, she said. . . .
—I will send you toys, horses, building blocks, books,
yes, anything you want. I will send books and write letters.
And then she left. . . .
She never sent any toys and never wrote any letters. . . .
256
From his mother he had already received the last letter in
October, when he was at Vilnäs, and there would never be
any more letters.7
From the very beginning of his years as a foster child, he must have
felt a mixture of abandonment and rejection, as well as hope and
longing.
The outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914 imposed all
kinds of restrictions on life in Sweden. Trade shrank dramatically.
Food became scarce. Emigration slowed to a trickle. Ships were
being torpedoed on the Atlantic. Mail service became sporadic. A l l
of this probably played a role in what happened to the Martinson
family. In Nässlorna b l o m m a , the author's young alter-ego is desper­ately
trying to make factual connections with Oregon. Martin en­counters
a Swedish-American Methodist missionary who is said to
have arrived from Oregon:
Imagine, she came all the way from the Cascade Mountains.
She gave him a postcard with a picture of the school where
she was a teacher who taught the avoidance of sin, what was
sin and what wasn't sin. . . . [The school] was beautiful and
had hundreds of windows; [it] was located on a shelf above a
valley of great natural beauty. It looked like nine regular
parishes could fit in the great hole of the valley.
He pointed out that it looked beautiful.
—Yes, it is God's own beauty, she said.8
And in his thoughts, Martin returns to the missionary and the land­scape
of Oregon later in the book.
She is from the Cascade Mountains. A n d even if the atoms
move like ants inside the Rocky Mountains, she is still from
the Cascade Mountains, a place of great natural beauty. . . .
He could feel his heart leap just to stand in front of Miss
Johannesson at the Methodists'. It must have to do with her
being from the Cascade Mountains.9
257
Perhaps his heart leaped because Miss Johannesson was another sym­bolic
connection to his mother. It is interesting to note that this
figure is cast as a missionary of morality. Are we to understand this as
irony, as an implied criticism of his mother? Or is it yet another
expression of hope that his mother will learn right from wrong in
Oregon, and that what is right will lead to the boy's reunion with his
mother?
Toward the end of the book, Martinson sets the tone for the
sequel in the author's account of his childhood, and he early estab­lishes
that longing, the desire to be with his mother again, as a
central force in his life. He writes, "In a way he wanted to get into
space—the only, irresistible sea that went all the way to California."10
The sequel to Nässlorna b l o m m a is called Vägen u t . Here we meet
the author's alter-ego, Martin Tomason, in one of his last foster homes.
Martin has grown older, and as his year on the farm comes to an end,
he is considered old enough to be on his own. The main character is
no longer the young boy who keeps repeating, " M y father is dead
and my mother is in California." Instead, there is another theme
which lies at the center of the second book: to become a sailor in
order to get to America. His thoughts usually stop at that point, but
the implication is, of course, that once he gets to America, he will be
able to join his mother. If the mood of the first book is dominated by
a sense of loss, the second evokes a sense of longing, dreaming, and
planning.
There are passages, however, which reveal that there is an aware­ness
on the part of the author of the true nature of his mother's
feelings towards her children left in Sweden.1 1 There is one passage in
particular in which the author gives us a glimpse of his own insight
into his relationship with the memory of his mother:
And far, far away there was Betty, his mother, enveloped by
the years' fog, preserved by his memory, the living statue of
his own selfishness, a statue that never crumbled. He knew
that he made her better than she was, he made her look
more beautiful, and he let the farthest image remain in the
same position forever. A t the farthest end of the fog she
stood frozen like Lot's wife.12
258
Another revealing passage comes up during a conversation with his
sister. In this Martin asks:
"Have you received any letters from America?"
"No, they're careful not to write."
"But they were going to help you over next."
"Oh really, were they? (Pause) Well, you can tie a knot
on a potato dumpling when that day comes. I have always
been the mean child, you know. Daddy is my daddy, that's
what they say."13
In other words, the sister has no illusions about being helped to
the United States. Martin, however, still clings to the hope that they
will all be helped over. But the sister was right. After World War I,
no more tickets came from Oregon to the children left in Sweden.
After 1920, no more letters came either. What had happened?
In Portland, Betty Olofsson initially worked as a maid while
getting integrated into the Swedish community there. Records show
that she was received as a member of the Swedish Lutheran Church
in Portland in May 1913.1 4 Just two years later she started her first
restaurant, a fact that young Martin Tomason is told by someone in
the community. "I have heard that she is a cook in California and
earns her daily bread for herself, but not for you."15
Sometime between May 1913 and November 1915, Betty Olofsson
met a Swede, Herman Ernest Johnson, and became known as Betty
Johnson.1 6 Even though Betty's change of name suggests marriage,
there is no record of a license in the "Vital Records" archive for the
city of Portland. O r e g o n P o s t e n , the weekly Swedish newspaper there,
listed a great number of marriages between Swedes in the city, but a
careful survey of the newspaper from this period failed to turn up any
mention of this union. A n investigation of the marriage records for
this period of the counties surrounding Portland has not turned up
any reference to it either.17 It is possible that they got married some­where
far from Portland, but a more likely explanation might be that
Betty simply assumed Herman's last name. As we know, she left
Sweden with a substantial debt, and a new last name would certainly
259
have made it more difficult to find her, if an old creditor from
Sweden ever tried to collect on any of her unpaid debts. Trying to
start her life over again, a new name might now seem like a good
idea.
Who was Herman Johnson? He was born i n 1887 in Vivsta
(Vifsta) Varv, near Sundsvall, and came to the United States as a
sailor in 1906.1 8 He never seems to have formally emigrated from
Sweden or formally immigrated to the United States.1 9 Perhaps he
simply jumped ship somewhere and worked his way to Portland.
Over the years he listed his profession in the city telephone directo­ries
as riveter, restaurant manager, accountant, fisherman, cement-worker,
seaman, and waiter. No one knows what Betty Johnson told
him of her previous life. Had she decided not to tell him? Since both
Clara and Blenda has been brought over before the outbreak of the
war, it seems unlikely that Herman could have been unaware of the
five children left in Sweden. Did he know about her earlier life and
want nothing to do with the children still there?
Alla slags svenska rätter,
såsom Köttbullar, Prässylta
Inlagd Sill serveras här
BETTY'S
Restaurant
84 Sixth Street
mellan Ort och Pine Sts.
Svensk Matlagning
Ett godt mål till billigt pris
Godt kaffe
BETTY JOHNSON, ägare
A d for Betty Olofson's restaurant in Portland's Swedish newspaper, Oregon
Posten, J 0 November 1915. The girl in the middle is either C l a r a or B l e n da
( w h o later changed her name to V e r a ) , but w h o is the young boy? A t this
time, Harry Martinson would have been eleven years old. O n e might wonder
if this a n o n y m o u s boy is a stand-in for the child left behind in Sweden.
260
In September 1915 Betty Johnson began to advertise her Betty's
Restaurant in Oregon P o s t e n . The ads appear only infrequently, and
this and several moves suggest that the restaurant struggled initially.
By 1920, however, things appear to be going very well, and her
coffee was even lauded by the editor on the front page of the news­paper.
Betty's coffee, which has won such great and universal praise
by all who have tasted it, is now available in 1 lb. packages
for $.50 ea. We have not had a better cup of coffee in any
other restaurant in Portland. Drink a cup of Betty's coffee in
the Multnomah News Depot, 53 3rd St., and you will agree
with us. Read the ad on page 8!20
The restaurant became a popular place for Swedes, and young Swedes
were even invited to get their mail through the restaurant.21 A pro­motional
postcard which showed both the exterior and interior had
the following text on the back in Swedish:
BETTY'S L U N C H . Modern Swedish café located in the
Multnomah Hotel building in Portland. Betty Johnson and
Herman Johnson, owners. Mrs. Johnson was born in Blekinge,
Sweden; Mr. Johnson was born in Vifsta Varv, Sweden.22
Harry Martinson's biographer has documented an anecdote about
a Swede from Betty Johnson's home province who happened to visit
the restaurant in the late 1920s. When Betty inquired where the
visitor was from and he replied "Jämshög," she simply said, "That's
where I am from, too." But she asked no questions about her chil­dren
or her old friends.23 It was clear she had burned all her bridges
to this past.
In 1920, Harry Martinson was sixteen years old. For a decade he
had been without a family and a home in the sense most know them,
and wherever he was, he carried the memory of his lost mother.
Following the completion of his mandatory schooling, he had spent
the years between 1917 and 1920 as a vagabond, taking whatever
jobs he could find while waiting to be old enough to go to sea.
261
Betty's L u n c h a t the N e w s D e p o t a t the Multnomah Hotel Building in
Portland, Oregon, c. 1 9 2 5 . The restaurant sign is located in the window to
the right of the scale.
During these years, he had several opportunities to settle down with
a steady job, but he rejected every single one just to hold to the
dream of becoming a sailor.24 His determination led to a great deal of
suffering. He was usually broke, poorly dressed, homeless, and hun­gry;
and he was arrested for vagrancy more than once.
In August 1920 Harry Martinson finally set foot on his first ship,
and two years later, on a different vessel, he arrived in New York. A t
last he had come to the country he had been dreaming of ever since
his mother had disappeared twelve years earlier. In New York he sent
a telegram to Betty in Portland, asking if he could come and see
her.2 5 She did not reply! It was a terrible blow to his hopes, and as far
as we know he never attempted to contact her again.
Harry Martinson never wrote about the attempt to contact his
mother in any of his books; nor did he tell us that he never received
a reply from her. Even though the two autobiographical works,
Nässlorna b l o m m a and Vägen u t , suggest that the young Harry
Martinson was aware that his mother had permanently severed her
ties with her four younger children, it may have been the adult
262
author's point of view projected back in time. Still, his mother's final
rejection must have been hard to accept. There is a crucial passage
in the book Resor u t a n mål. A t the close of the chapter called "S/S
Monica," we catch a glimpse of the author's resignation. Obviously,
he is thinking of the time when he'd tried to contact his mother with
the telegram. The narrator's ship is heading up the Mississippi, and he
is on deck with another sailor watching the banks of the river: "Here
it was, the country to which my mother had run away; and I began
telling Wallrichs about it, a bit carelessly, the way you do about
things you intend to forget."2 6 "Things you intend to forget" is an
interesting choice of words, since Harry Martinson was known to
have a photographic memory, and apparently forgot very little of
what he saw and experienced.
What else do we learn about Martinson's dreams of Portland in
his two sailor books? Practically nothing. But sometimes books tell us
something by what isn't in them, and I would argue that K a p Farväl!
is such a book—especially for the way it ends. It concludes with the
narrator returning home after his years on the world's oceans, and
close to the very end of the book he is able to see clearly what drove
him out in the first place. "The content of myself was really just
longing; a formless, wordless longing for California."2 7
The interior of Betty's L u n c h . Betty Johnson can be seen in the back of the restaurant,
and the person to the left, behind the cash register, is probably H e r m a n Johnson.
263
I should perhaps add here that many critics have written about
the nomadic outlook of these two books, of drifting around as a
philosophy of life, and I wonder if that approach was not the only
sane way for Harry Martinson to deal with his mother's rejection. If
one cannot love one's mother and belong in the context of the
family and community, then why not turn that loss around and
celebrate a completely nomadic existence. The titles of his two sailor
novels do not describe the way his journeys began, but how they
ended. In fact, as Harry Martinson's life demonstrates, his travels
started as a "journey with a goal" and ended as a "Cape Hello."
Many years after his mother's death, Martinson was asked by his
biographer why he never jumped ship and made his way to Oregon,
since doing so without papers was something he ended up doing in
many different countries around the world. He was not able to an­swer
the question. The subject was still too painful to talk about.28
In Portland, Betty and Herman Johnson continued in the restau­rant
business, even though the Depression years appear to have been
difficult. During the 1930s, for example, there are no more ads for
the restaurant in the local press. Herman died in 1944, and Betty
passed away two years later. She was seventy-one years old.2 9 In her
will, all of her possessions were to be divided equally between Clara
and Blenda, the two daughters who had been brought over to America.
Each of her remaining children in Sweden was to receive $10, a
symbolic amount given to them to prevent the will from being con­tested.
According to his biographer, Martinson took this very hard
and wanted no contact whatsoever with his sister, Clara, who wrote
several letters to one of the sisters in Sweden. If he had been given a
copy of the entire court record, he might have felt less bitter. From
these documents one can see that a new mortgage had to be taken
out on Betty Johnson's house in Portland just to pay the funeral
expenses. A t the time of her death, she was far from wealthy!
A l l the pages filed in the official record regarding Betty Johnson's
estate make for revealing reading. They show, among other things,
that the division of the family had been permanent and final. For
example, there are no mailing addresses for any of the children back
in Sweden; they are simply referred to as living in the "province of
Kristianstad." Furthermore, the person in charge of notifying the
264
children of Betty's death seems to have been unaware that Harry had
changed his last name from Olofsson to Martinson while still very
young.
Betty Johnson died on 6 May 1946 from cancer of the gall
bladder. The day was also Harry's birthday. Her ashes were placed in
the Sellwood Memorial in Portland in a container shaped like a
book—an unusual but not rare choice. Was the shape of the urn
somehow an acknowledgment of Harry Martinson having become an
author . . . or a silent acknowledgment of her abandoned son's place
in her life? Did Betty even know that her son had become a famous
author and poet who, by 1946, had already published thirteen books,
one of which, K a p Farväl!, had been translated into English in 1933
and released in New York the following year?30 Considering the num­ber
of people who traveled back and forth between Sweden and
Oregon, and all the correspondence that passed between Swedes and
their relatives in America, it is hard to think that Harry Martinson's
fame would have been completely unknown among the Swedes in
Portland.
"Betty's Light Lunch"
Betty Johnson och Charles A. Oman, Ägare
53 THIRD STREET (Multnomah Hotel) Phone Bdway 2158
B E T T Y ' S KAFFE för 40 cents per pound
Kaffe med smörgåsar, från kl. 6:30 till 12 e. m. Lunch
bestående af soppa, köttbullar, skinka med ägg, kaffe m . m .
servers dagligen. Anjovis, knäckebröd m. m.
Kuriko, Rökvaror, Tidningar och Tidskrifter. Alla slags
milda drycker, fin modern Sodafontän, Ice Cream.
Landsmän hälsas välkomna hit, och unga svenskar kunna
hafva sin post adresserad hit.
A d for the restaurant in Oregon Posten, 16 February 1921.
265
ENDNOTES
1. Sonja Erfurth, Harry Martinsons barndomsvärld (Lund: Vekerum Förlag,
1989), 41. The facts regarding Harry Martinson's parents presented here were
gathered from the early chapters of this book. Hereafter HMB.
2. Harry Martinson, Nässlorna b l o m m a (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag,
1944), 15, 17. Hereafter NB.
3. HMB, 47.
4. NB, 47.
5. HMB, 73.
6. HMB, 74-76.
7. NB, 107, 111.
8. NB, 231.
9. NB, 246.
10. NB, 289.
11. One must not forget the perspective in these two autobiographical
novels: that the thoughts of the young boy have the added perspective of the
adult Harry Martinson looking back after the failed attempt to reconnect with
his mother.
12. Marry Martinson, Vägen ut (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1949),
146. Hereafter V U .
13. V U , 74.
14. Betty 01ofs[s]son was re­ceived
"by confirmation" into the
First Immanuel Lutheran Church in
Portland, Oregon, 1816 NW Irving
Street, on 11 May 1913. Book B-1
of the permanent church records,
193.
15. VU, 58. The boy, Martin
Tomason, does not seem to know
about his mother's restaurant and
claims she works in a cannery. But
in general, adult Swedes were prob­ably
well informed about relatives
and friends living in the United
States. For example, in almost ev­ery
issue of the Swedish newspaper
O r e g o n Posten people were encour­aged
to give a subscription to
friends and family back home. Sev-
Betty and H e r m a n Johnson's burial urns in
Sellwood M e m o r i a l , Portland, Oregon.
266
eral letters to the editor indicate that Swedes in Sweden did indeed read Oregon
Posten and would have been aware of its articles and ads.
16. From the records of the Swedish church in Portland, we know that she
was still known as Betty Olofsson in May 1913. The 1915 Portland telephone
directory lists an "Olafsson Betty Mrs," but the ad for her restaurant in O r e g o n
Posten for 10 November 1915 refers to her as "Betty Johnson, ägare." Also,
beginning in 1916, the Portland telephone directory lists her as "Johnson (Betty)."
17. Information provided by Bertil Sundvall, a researcher for "Swedish
Roots in Oregon" in Portland, Oregon. Hereafter referred to as Sundvall.
18. A t the time of Herman Johnson's death in 1944, he is said to have been
in the United States for thirty-eight years and in the community of Portland for
thirty-two years.
19. Sundvall.
20. Oregon Posten, 27 October 1920.
21. O r e g o n Posten, 16 February 1921.
22. The text comes from a promotional postcard for the restaurant. It is one
of several photographs of Swedes in Oregon assembled by Portland's Linnea
Society in the early to mid-1920s. Now part of the Linnea Society archive in
Portland, Oregon.
23. Sonja Erfurth, Harry Martinson og vägen ut (Lund:Vekerum Förlag, 1991),
196. Hereafter HMOVU. In the chapter called "Moderns och systrarnas liv i
Amerika," Erfurth cautions the reader that she has not been able to verify the
facts about Betty Olofsson/Johnson provided by Harry Martinson's sisters, and
she does not know how reliable they are. Although research shows that Betty
seems to have opened her restaurant business much earlier than the sisters re­member,
the general outline of their accounts seems accurate.
24. I am thinking especially of Harry Martinson's winter at Jonsereds bruk
from the fall of 1919 to the spring of 1920, and of the possibilities that place
held for him. See HMOVU, 120-42.
25. HMOVU, 199.
26. Harry Martinson, Resor utan mål (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag,
1932), 62.
27. Harry Martinson, K a p Farväl! (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1947),
247.
28. HMOVU, 199.
29. Death certificates from Holman and Lutz, Inc., now part of Caldwell's
Colonial Chapel, Portland, Oregon.
30. Harry Martinson, Cape F a r e w e l l (New York: Putnam, 1934), translated
by Naomi Walford.
267

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Harry Martinson:
Dreaming about Portland, Oregon
LARS NORDSTROM
Harry Martinson's biographer, Sonja Erfurth, writes that when
Martin Olofsson, Harry Martinson's father, first saw Bengta
Svensdotter, the author's mother, he was so taken by her beauty
and charm that he abruptly abandoned his previous fiance and from
that moment would not leave Bengta alone.1 According to some of
their contemporaries, he was not her first choice for a husband, but
she had become pregnant and social conventions held out only one
option—so in September 1895 they were married. Considering these
circumstances, it is not surprising that Martin appears to have been a
jealous husband from the start. Furthermore, it also seems likely that
Olofsson, a world-traveler and adventurer, came to regret his deci­sion
to settle down in an area with strong traditions, fixed social
positions, and stubborn resistance to change. Over time he clearly
became an increasingly bitter man.
Using Martin's inheritance, the newlyweds set up a small country
store on the first floor of their house in the village of Nyteboda in
Blekinge. Over the years, seven children were born to the couple.
Harry was the fifth and the only boy. Due to his abrasive personality
and short temper, Martin Olofsson made more and more enemies as
the years went by. Eventually there was a lawsuit following one of his
many fights, and Olofsson had to pay a fine and spend three months
in jail. This was only the first in a growing number of fights, jail
sentences, and fines. In 1904, after mounting debts and repeated
lawsuits brought by unpaid creditors, the Olofsson store was declared
LARS NORDSTROM holds a P h . D . in A m e r i c a n literature from the University of
Uppsala. In the late 1980s he settled with his family on a small vineyard in O r e g on
and has since w o r k e d as a free-lance author and translator. His areas of interest include
twentieth-century American, Swedish, and Sami literature.
bankrupt and the family lost its home. A l l of this proved to be too
much for the marriage, and Martin and Bengta, or Betty, as she was
now called, separated (but did not divorce). In 1905 Martin Olofsson
received a boat ticket from a childhood friend in the United States.
He used this to reach America, and he eventually settled in Port­land,
Oregon. There he found work with the city streetcar company.
Removed from the conflicts at home, he was able to get back on his
feet. The fact that he regularly sent money home to the family and
stayed out of fights and brawls demonstrated two things: that he was
loyal to his family and this his problems in Sweden were at least
partially related to his discontent with the community in which he
had lived.
When Harry Martinson writes about his father's life in the United
States in his autobiographical novel Nässlorna b l o m m a , he correctly
places the father in Portland and provides details in a matter-of-fact
way. For example, he writes: "For two years he stood driving a trolley
in a city far away by the Pacific Ocean. It was difficult for him that far
away. . . . But the letters from Portland were not few and far between.
He had not forgotten her."2 During her husband's absence, Betty
Olofsson, with the additional financial support of friends and neigh­bors,
was able to open a new store under her own name. The chil­dren
were healthy and happy, and Erfurth writes that these were
"probably the best years in Betty Olofsson's life."3
In the spring of 1908, Martin returned to Sweden. He had con­tracted
tuberculosis and been told by a doctor that a change of
climate would be beneficial. Sharing the common belief of the time
that alcohol worked as a cure for the disease, Olofsson started drink­ing
on a regular basis again. He was bitter over his fate and increas­ingly
jealous of his wife, whom he suspected of having lovers. It did
not take long before he was back into his old pattern of responding
to the slightest teasing or provocation with his fists.
With her husband in jail after an unusually severe beating, Betty
decided to move the family to a small, nearby town and open a
larger store combined with a restaurant. On the surface, the woman
with seven children seemed to be doing quite well. The roomy house
was nicely furnished. The children were clean and dressed in fine
clothes. They even employed a maid. But in reality, the business was
254
failing. Creditors were not being paid with income from the store and
restaurant, but with money from new loans in an ever-accelerating
spiral of debts. In prison Martin's tuberculosis got worse, and when he
was released in the spring of 1910 he was transferred directly to a
hospital. A few weeks before his death in April 1910, he was sent
home.
In August 1910 Betty Olofsson's business finally collapsed and
was declared bankrupt. There was a debt of about 17,000 SEK, a
substantial amount of money at the time. To put this amount in
context, we can compare it to the salary of the richest man in the
area, a factory owner, who declared an annual income of about
10,000 SEK; or of the typical farmhand, who averaged about 100
SEK a year on top of his room and board. To make matters worse, it
was now discovered that the oldest daughter also had contracted
tuberculosis and had to be sent to a sanatorium.
It is hard to imagine a more desperate situation. The Swedish
economy was in a slump; Betty was burdened with unpayable debts;
she had seven children to take care of, one of whom now had
tuberculosis; and there was a well-guarded secret as well—she was
pregnant, and her late husband was not the father. Unfortunately, the
real father had no intention of marrying her, and with the social
conventions in place in Sweden at the time, an illegitimate child on
top of everything else would put Betty at the very bottom of society.
Towards the end of November 1920, she abruptly left, leaving her
children behind to be looked after by her half-sister, Hilda.
In his novel Nässlorna b l o m m a , Harry Martinson describes his
mother's sudden departure as "mother Betty's inexplicable flight."4
Throughout the novel, the author's alter ego, the young boy Martin,
keeps repeating the line "My father is dead and my mother is in
California," and emphasizing that loss is one of the central themes of
the book.
Exactly what happened to Betty Olofsson after her sudden depar­ture
is not fully known, but she seems to have stayed in Göteborg
under an assumed name until the end of January 1911, when she
gave birth to a son who was given up for adoption.5 In the spring of
the same year she was in Portland, Oregon, where she found work as
a maid. She wrote back saying that there were many Swedes in the
255
area and plenty of work, and that she made $40 a month. As soon as
she could save up enough money for tickets, she would send for her
children.6 In Sweden, her half-sister lacked the financial means to
keep six extra children at her house, and, receiving little, if any, help
from Betty in Oregon, she was forced to hand over the children to
the local authorities. They, in their turn, scattered the children in
various foster homes in the parish. Meanwhile, tragedy struck the
family again: in May 1911 the oldest girl, Edith, died of tuberculosis.
Like his four sisters, young Harry Olofsson spent the years be­tween
1912 and 1917 as a foster child on various farms, and it was
during these years that he changed his name to Harry Martinson.
Some farms were good places with friendly people, clean accommo­dations,
and sufficient food and clothing. Others were quite the op­posite:
abominable places with beatings, lack of food, scant clothing,
and appalling conditions. Harry ran away more than once. In Nässlorna
b l o m m a , whenever the boy runs away from a foster home, it is to find
Betty in "California." This novel was originally published in 1935,
and it is interesting to note that, whereas all the references to his
father's sojourn in Portland are factual, the location of his mother,
who was still alive in 1935, is always altered to California. California
becomes, in other words, Harry Martinson's code word for Portland.
In 1912 Betty Olofsson was able to send her daughter Clara a
ticket to Portland, and a year later Blenda received a ticket. Natu­rally,
the remaining four children kept waiting for their mother to
send them tickets to Portland as well. In Harry Martinson's fiction,
the boy's early years are characterized by longing for his mother while
waiting for that ticket to America. Still, he is aware that something is
not right. In a passage in which his older sister comes to visit before
she is off to America, we catch a glimpse of this:
Now she was, she said, finally confirmed and on her way to
California. Mother had sent her a ticket.
—She will help us all to come over, she said. . . .
—I will send you toys, horses, building blocks, books,
yes, anything you want. I will send books and write letters.
And then she left. . . .
She never sent any toys and never wrote any letters. . . .
256
From his mother he had already received the last letter in
October, when he was at Vilnäs, and there would never be
any more letters.7
From the very beginning of his years as a foster child, he must have
felt a mixture of abandonment and rejection, as well as hope and
longing.
The outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914 imposed all
kinds of restrictions on life in Sweden. Trade shrank dramatically.
Food became scarce. Emigration slowed to a trickle. Ships were
being torpedoed on the Atlantic. Mail service became sporadic. A l l
of this probably played a role in what happened to the Martinson
family. In Nässlorna b l o m m a , the author's young alter-ego is desper­ately
trying to make factual connections with Oregon. Martin en­counters
a Swedish-American Methodist missionary who is said to
have arrived from Oregon:
Imagine, she came all the way from the Cascade Mountains.
She gave him a postcard with a picture of the school where
she was a teacher who taught the avoidance of sin, what was
sin and what wasn't sin. . . . [The school] was beautiful and
had hundreds of windows; [it] was located on a shelf above a
valley of great natural beauty. It looked like nine regular
parishes could fit in the great hole of the valley.
He pointed out that it looked beautiful.
—Yes, it is God's own beauty, she said.8
And in his thoughts, Martin returns to the missionary and the land­scape
of Oregon later in the book.
She is from the Cascade Mountains. A n d even if the atoms
move like ants inside the Rocky Mountains, she is still from
the Cascade Mountains, a place of great natural beauty. . . .
He could feel his heart leap just to stand in front of Miss
Johannesson at the Methodists'. It must have to do with her
being from the Cascade Mountains.9
257
Perhaps his heart leaped because Miss Johannesson was another sym­bolic
connection to his mother. It is interesting to note that this
figure is cast as a missionary of morality. Are we to understand this as
irony, as an implied criticism of his mother? Or is it yet another
expression of hope that his mother will learn right from wrong in
Oregon, and that what is right will lead to the boy's reunion with his
mother?
Toward the end of the book, Martinson sets the tone for the
sequel in the author's account of his childhood, and he early estab­lishes
that longing, the desire to be with his mother again, as a
central force in his life. He writes, "In a way he wanted to get into
space—the only, irresistible sea that went all the way to California."10
The sequel to Nässlorna b l o m m a is called Vägen u t . Here we meet
the author's alter-ego, Martin Tomason, in one of his last foster homes.
Martin has grown older, and as his year on the farm comes to an end,
he is considered old enough to be on his own. The main character is
no longer the young boy who keeps repeating, " M y father is dead
and my mother is in California." Instead, there is another theme
which lies at the center of the second book: to become a sailor in
order to get to America. His thoughts usually stop at that point, but
the implication is, of course, that once he gets to America, he will be
able to join his mother. If the mood of the first book is dominated by
a sense of loss, the second evokes a sense of longing, dreaming, and
planning.
There are passages, however, which reveal that there is an aware­ness
on the part of the author of the true nature of his mother's
feelings towards her children left in Sweden.1 1 There is one passage in
particular in which the author gives us a glimpse of his own insight
into his relationship with the memory of his mother:
And far, far away there was Betty, his mother, enveloped by
the years' fog, preserved by his memory, the living statue of
his own selfishness, a statue that never crumbled. He knew
that he made her better than she was, he made her look
more beautiful, and he let the farthest image remain in the
same position forever. A t the farthest end of the fog she
stood frozen like Lot's wife.12
258
Another revealing passage comes up during a conversation with his
sister. In this Martin asks:
"Have you received any letters from America?"
"No, they're careful not to write."
"But they were going to help you over next."
"Oh really, were they? (Pause) Well, you can tie a knot
on a potato dumpling when that day comes. I have always
been the mean child, you know. Daddy is my daddy, that's
what they say."13
In other words, the sister has no illusions about being helped to
the United States. Martin, however, still clings to the hope that they
will all be helped over. But the sister was right. After World War I,
no more tickets came from Oregon to the children left in Sweden.
After 1920, no more letters came either. What had happened?
In Portland, Betty Olofsson initially worked as a maid while
getting integrated into the Swedish community there. Records show
that she was received as a member of the Swedish Lutheran Church
in Portland in May 1913.1 4 Just two years later she started her first
restaurant, a fact that young Martin Tomason is told by someone in
the community. "I have heard that she is a cook in California and
earns her daily bread for herself, but not for you."15
Sometime between May 1913 and November 1915, Betty Olofsson
met a Swede, Herman Ernest Johnson, and became known as Betty
Johnson.1 6 Even though Betty's change of name suggests marriage,
there is no record of a license in the "Vital Records" archive for the
city of Portland. O r e g o n P o s t e n , the weekly Swedish newspaper there,
listed a great number of marriages between Swedes in the city, but a
careful survey of the newspaper from this period failed to turn up any
mention of this union. A n investigation of the marriage records for
this period of the counties surrounding Portland has not turned up
any reference to it either.17 It is possible that they got married some­where
far from Portland, but a more likely explanation might be that
Betty simply assumed Herman's last name. As we know, she left
Sweden with a substantial debt, and a new last name would certainly
259
have made it more difficult to find her, if an old creditor from
Sweden ever tried to collect on any of her unpaid debts. Trying to
start her life over again, a new name might now seem like a good
idea.
Who was Herman Johnson? He was born i n 1887 in Vivsta
(Vifsta) Varv, near Sundsvall, and came to the United States as a
sailor in 1906.1 8 He never seems to have formally emigrated from
Sweden or formally immigrated to the United States.1 9 Perhaps he
simply jumped ship somewhere and worked his way to Portland.
Over the years he listed his profession in the city telephone directo­ries
as riveter, restaurant manager, accountant, fisherman, cement-worker,
seaman, and waiter. No one knows what Betty Johnson told
him of her previous life. Had she decided not to tell him? Since both
Clara and Blenda has been brought over before the outbreak of the
war, it seems unlikely that Herman could have been unaware of the
five children left in Sweden. Did he know about her earlier life and
want nothing to do with the children still there?
Alla slags svenska rätter,
såsom Köttbullar, Prässylta
Inlagd Sill serveras här
BETTY'S
Restaurant
84 Sixth Street
mellan Ort och Pine Sts.
Svensk Matlagning
Ett godt mål till billigt pris
Godt kaffe
BETTY JOHNSON, ägare
A d for Betty Olofson's restaurant in Portland's Swedish newspaper, Oregon
Posten, J 0 November 1915. The girl in the middle is either C l a r a or B l e n da
( w h o later changed her name to V e r a ) , but w h o is the young boy? A t this
time, Harry Martinson would have been eleven years old. O n e might wonder
if this a n o n y m o u s boy is a stand-in for the child left behind in Sweden.
260
In September 1915 Betty Johnson began to advertise her Betty's
Restaurant in Oregon P o s t e n . The ads appear only infrequently, and
this and several moves suggest that the restaurant struggled initially.
By 1920, however, things appear to be going very well, and her
coffee was even lauded by the editor on the front page of the news­paper.
Betty's coffee, which has won such great and universal praise
by all who have tasted it, is now available in 1 lb. packages
for $.50 ea. We have not had a better cup of coffee in any
other restaurant in Portland. Drink a cup of Betty's coffee in
the Multnomah News Depot, 53 3rd St., and you will agree
with us. Read the ad on page 8!20
The restaurant became a popular place for Swedes, and young Swedes
were even invited to get their mail through the restaurant.21 A pro­motional
postcard which showed both the exterior and interior had
the following text on the back in Swedish:
BETTY'S L U N C H . Modern Swedish café located in the
Multnomah Hotel building in Portland. Betty Johnson and
Herman Johnson, owners. Mrs. Johnson was born in Blekinge,
Sweden; Mr. Johnson was born in Vifsta Varv, Sweden.22
Harry Martinson's biographer has documented an anecdote about
a Swede from Betty Johnson's home province who happened to visit
the restaurant in the late 1920s. When Betty inquired where the
visitor was from and he replied "Jämshög," she simply said, "That's
where I am from, too." But she asked no questions about her chil­dren
or her old friends.23 It was clear she had burned all her bridges
to this past.
In 1920, Harry Martinson was sixteen years old. For a decade he
had been without a family and a home in the sense most know them,
and wherever he was, he carried the memory of his lost mother.
Following the completion of his mandatory schooling, he had spent
the years between 1917 and 1920 as a vagabond, taking whatever
jobs he could find while waiting to be old enough to go to sea.
261
Betty's L u n c h a t the N e w s D e p o t a t the Multnomah Hotel Building in
Portland, Oregon, c. 1 9 2 5 . The restaurant sign is located in the window to
the right of the scale.
During these years, he had several opportunities to settle down with
a steady job, but he rejected every single one just to hold to the
dream of becoming a sailor.24 His determination led to a great deal of
suffering. He was usually broke, poorly dressed, homeless, and hun­gry;
and he was arrested for vagrancy more than once.
In August 1920 Harry Martinson finally set foot on his first ship,
and two years later, on a different vessel, he arrived in New York. A t
last he had come to the country he had been dreaming of ever since
his mother had disappeared twelve years earlier. In New York he sent
a telegram to Betty in Portland, asking if he could come and see
her.2 5 She did not reply! It was a terrible blow to his hopes, and as far
as we know he never attempted to contact her again.
Harry Martinson never wrote about the attempt to contact his
mother in any of his books; nor did he tell us that he never received
a reply from her. Even though the two autobiographical works,
Nässlorna b l o m m a and Vägen u t , suggest that the young Harry
Martinson was aware that his mother had permanently severed her
ties with her four younger children, it may have been the adult
262
author's point of view projected back in time. Still, his mother's final
rejection must have been hard to accept. There is a crucial passage
in the book Resor u t a n mål. A t the close of the chapter called "S/S
Monica," we catch a glimpse of the author's resignation. Obviously,
he is thinking of the time when he'd tried to contact his mother with
the telegram. The narrator's ship is heading up the Mississippi, and he
is on deck with another sailor watching the banks of the river: "Here
it was, the country to which my mother had run away; and I began
telling Wallrichs about it, a bit carelessly, the way you do about
things you intend to forget."2 6 "Things you intend to forget" is an
interesting choice of words, since Harry Martinson was known to
have a photographic memory, and apparently forgot very little of
what he saw and experienced.
What else do we learn about Martinson's dreams of Portland in
his two sailor books? Practically nothing. But sometimes books tell us
something by what isn't in them, and I would argue that K a p Farväl!
is such a book—especially for the way it ends. It concludes with the
narrator returning home after his years on the world's oceans, and
close to the very end of the book he is able to see clearly what drove
him out in the first place. "The content of myself was really just
longing; a formless, wordless longing for California."2 7
The interior of Betty's L u n c h . Betty Johnson can be seen in the back of the restaurant,
and the person to the left, behind the cash register, is probably H e r m a n Johnson.
263
I should perhaps add here that many critics have written about
the nomadic outlook of these two books, of drifting around as a
philosophy of life, and I wonder if that approach was not the only
sane way for Harry Martinson to deal with his mother's rejection. If
one cannot love one's mother and belong in the context of the
family and community, then why not turn that loss around and
celebrate a completely nomadic existence. The titles of his two sailor
novels do not describe the way his journeys began, but how they
ended. In fact, as Harry Martinson's life demonstrates, his travels
started as a "journey with a goal" and ended as a "Cape Hello."
Many years after his mother's death, Martinson was asked by his
biographer why he never jumped ship and made his way to Oregon,
since doing so without papers was something he ended up doing in
many different countries around the world. He was not able to an­swer
the question. The subject was still too painful to talk about.28
In Portland, Betty and Herman Johnson continued in the restau­rant
business, even though the Depression years appear to have been
difficult. During the 1930s, for example, there are no more ads for
the restaurant in the local press. Herman died in 1944, and Betty
passed away two years later. She was seventy-one years old.2 9 In her
will, all of her possessions were to be divided equally between Clara
and Blenda, the two daughters who had been brought over to America.
Each of her remaining children in Sweden was to receive $10, a
symbolic amount given to them to prevent the will from being con­tested.
According to his biographer, Martinson took this very hard
and wanted no contact whatsoever with his sister, Clara, who wrote
several letters to one of the sisters in Sweden. If he had been given a
copy of the entire court record, he might have felt less bitter. From
these documents one can see that a new mortgage had to be taken
out on Betty Johnson's house in Portland just to pay the funeral
expenses. A t the time of her death, she was far from wealthy!
A l l the pages filed in the official record regarding Betty Johnson's
estate make for revealing reading. They show, among other things,
that the division of the family had been permanent and final. For
example, there are no mailing addresses for any of the children back
in Sweden; they are simply referred to as living in the "province of
Kristianstad." Furthermore, the person in charge of notifying the
264
children of Betty's death seems to have been unaware that Harry had
changed his last name from Olofsson to Martinson while still very
young.
Betty Johnson died on 6 May 1946 from cancer of the gall
bladder. The day was also Harry's birthday. Her ashes were placed in
the Sellwood Memorial in Portland in a container shaped like a
book—an unusual but not rare choice. Was the shape of the urn
somehow an acknowledgment of Harry Martinson having become an
author . . . or a silent acknowledgment of her abandoned son's place
in her life? Did Betty even know that her son had become a famous
author and poet who, by 1946, had already published thirteen books,
one of which, K a p Farväl!, had been translated into English in 1933
and released in New York the following year?30 Considering the num­ber
of people who traveled back and forth between Sweden and
Oregon, and all the correspondence that passed between Swedes and
their relatives in America, it is hard to think that Harry Martinson's
fame would have been completely unknown among the Swedes in
Portland.
"Betty's Light Lunch"
Betty Johnson och Charles A. Oman, Ägare
53 THIRD STREET (Multnomah Hotel) Phone Bdway 2158
B E T T Y ' S KAFFE för 40 cents per pound
Kaffe med smörgåsar, från kl. 6:30 till 12 e. m. Lunch
bestående af soppa, köttbullar, skinka med ägg, kaffe m . m .
servers dagligen. Anjovis, knäckebröd m. m.
Kuriko, Rökvaror, Tidningar och Tidskrifter. Alla slags
milda drycker, fin modern Sodafontän, Ice Cream.
Landsmän hälsas välkomna hit, och unga svenskar kunna
hafva sin post adresserad hit.
A d for the restaurant in Oregon Posten, 16 February 1921.
265
ENDNOTES
1. Sonja Erfurth, Harry Martinsons barndomsvärld (Lund: Vekerum Förlag,
1989), 41. The facts regarding Harry Martinson's parents presented here were
gathered from the early chapters of this book. Hereafter HMB.
2. Harry Martinson, Nässlorna b l o m m a (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag,
1944), 15, 17. Hereafter NB.
3. HMB, 47.
4. NB, 47.
5. HMB, 73.
6. HMB, 74-76.
7. NB, 107, 111.
8. NB, 231.
9. NB, 246.
10. NB, 289.
11. One must not forget the perspective in these two autobiographical
novels: that the thoughts of the young boy have the added perspective of the
adult Harry Martinson looking back after the failed attempt to reconnect with
his mother.
12. Marry Martinson, Vägen ut (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1949),
146. Hereafter V U .
13. V U , 74.
14. Betty 01ofs[s]son was re­ceived
"by confirmation" into the
First Immanuel Lutheran Church in
Portland, Oregon, 1816 NW Irving
Street, on 11 May 1913. Book B-1
of the permanent church records,
193.
15. VU, 58. The boy, Martin
Tomason, does not seem to know
about his mother's restaurant and
claims she works in a cannery. But
in general, adult Swedes were prob­ably
well informed about relatives
and friends living in the United
States. For example, in almost ev­ery
issue of the Swedish newspaper
O r e g o n Posten people were encour­aged
to give a subscription to
friends and family back home. Sev-
Betty and H e r m a n Johnson's burial urns in
Sellwood M e m o r i a l , Portland, Oregon.
266
eral letters to the editor indicate that Swedes in Sweden did indeed read Oregon
Posten and would have been aware of its articles and ads.
16. From the records of the Swedish church in Portland, we know that she
was still known as Betty Olofsson in May 1913. The 1915 Portland telephone
directory lists an "Olafsson Betty Mrs," but the ad for her restaurant in O r e g o n
Posten for 10 November 1915 refers to her as "Betty Johnson, ägare." Also,
beginning in 1916, the Portland telephone directory lists her as "Johnson (Betty)."
17. Information provided by Bertil Sundvall, a researcher for "Swedish
Roots in Oregon" in Portland, Oregon. Hereafter referred to as Sundvall.
18. A t the time of Herman Johnson's death in 1944, he is said to have been
in the United States for thirty-eight years and in the community of Portland for
thirty-two years.
19. Sundvall.
20. Oregon Posten, 27 October 1920.
21. O r e g o n Posten, 16 February 1921.
22. The text comes from a promotional postcard for the restaurant. It is one
of several photographs of Swedes in Oregon assembled by Portland's Linnea
Society in the early to mid-1920s. Now part of the Linnea Society archive in
Portland, Oregon.
23. Sonja Erfurth, Harry Martinson og vägen ut (Lund:Vekerum Förlag, 1991),
196. Hereafter HMOVU. In the chapter called "Moderns och systrarnas liv i
Amerika," Erfurth cautions the reader that she has not been able to verify the
facts about Betty Olofsson/Johnson provided by Harry Martinson's sisters, and
she does not know how reliable they are. Although research shows that Betty
seems to have opened her restaurant business much earlier than the sisters re­member,
the general outline of their accounts seems accurate.
24. I am thinking especially of Harry Martinson's winter at Jonsereds bruk
from the fall of 1919 to the spring of 1920, and of the possibilities that place
held for him. See HMOVU, 120-42.
25. HMOVU, 199.
26. Harry Martinson, Resor utan mål (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag,
1932), 62.
27. Harry Martinson, K a p Farväl! (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1947),
247.
28. HMOVU, 199.
29. Death certificates from Holman and Lutz, Inc., now part of Caldwell's
Colonial Chapel, Portland, Oregon.
30. Harry Martinson, Cape F a r e w e l l (New York: Putnam, 1934), translated
by Naomi Walford.
267